The present invention relates to a bait station for holding bait for consumption by flying insects, such as fruit flies.
Flying insects pose a devastating threat to organized agriculture, such as fruits and vegetables. Despite this threat, there are relatively few control methods available. In an attempt to combat these flying insects, certain toxic chemicals have been sprayed over the desired agricultural area. This has had an effect of controlling, and sometimes eliminating, large numbers of insects, and this spraying technique is still widely used. However, this widespread spraying of toxic chemicals has caused problems.
For instance, some of these chemicals have harmed personnel that handle these products, despite seemingly adequate precautions. Additionally, people and animals can be accidently sprayed with these chemicals, and in some instances, suffer serious health consequences. Other times, the agricultural product, the supposed beneficiary of this treatment, absorbs or simply retains excessive levels of the sprayed toxins on its outer surface. This can potentially cause health problems to humans who consume the agricultural products. It is also possible that runoff from these agricultural farms may contain large amounts of these chemicals that eventually find their way to remote, unsuspecting destinations. Such runoff of toxic chemicals can potentially upset fragile ecosystems, contaminate fresh water supplies, and pose a serious health risk to humans.
Other methods to control the flying insect populations have been attempted, but they too have suffered drawbacks. A variety of flying insect trap designs have been deployed. However, the insect traps are limited by size as a flying insect trap can only catch and retain as many insects as it has internally available space. Insect traps may also require significant human labor to periodically clean or replace the traps.
Several insect bait stations have also been designed in an attempt to solve this problem. While bait stations have experienced some success at controlling the insect population in its immediately surrounding area, many prior art insect bait station designs have also suffered drawbacks. A major drawback has been the cost of prior bait stations, making the use of such stations cost prohibitive in some circumstances. Other drawbacks have related to the assembly, storage, deployment, and effectiveness of the bait stations.
Some prior art insect bait stations are made from multiple parts. This can cause significant assembly time, especially in view of the large number of bait stations required for most agricultural farms. Further, prior to deployment, the bait stations need to be stored. The shape and configuration of many of the prior art bait stations were known to cause a large amount and often expensive storage area to be necessary.
Further, laborers typically carry these bait stations from the storage area to the field. Due to the size, shape, configuration, and weight of the prior art bait stations, laborers have been severely limited by the number of bait stations they can carry in a single trip from the storage facility to the field. Consequently, laborers could end up carrying only a few bait stations at a time causing a large number of trips to be made to install enough bait stations to effectively cover the desired area. This repeated need to make multiple trips could result in a significant expenditure in man hours of labor.
Prior art bait stations also have some drawbacks regarding effectiveness. One such drawback was that the access openings for the insects were frequently too small for the free and easy entry by flying insects and insects would sometimes have to walk into the station. Other bait stations suffered from poor designs minimizing the air circulation from the bait. Accordingly, an improved bait station for flying insects was thus needed.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a stackable, lightweight, user-friendly, easily assembled and cost efficient flying insect bait station for use in desired agricultural areas.
The present invention also provides a bait station that is stackable to reduce storage space and enable a laborer to carry many stations in a single trip.
The present invention also preferably includes a single piece injection-molded insect bait station. The bait station may include two curved halves hingeably attached by a foldable connecting piece or hinge that is molded with the curved halves. On the unconnected edges, tab and groove pieces that serve as a locking mechanism when the two curved halves are folded over to complete the cylinder. A roof is sloped to provide improved water drainage. A deployment loop is attached to the center of the sloped roof, and is used to place the bait station in desired locations. In the open position, the bait station is in an ideal configuration to be stacked, allowing for compact shipping and storage.
The bait station also preferably includes a plurality of holes. A linear hole near the middle of the cylinder is used to attach a bait holder to the bait station. Circular holes above the linear holes and near the top of the cylinder are vent holes that disperse the attractant of the bait to lure flying insects. The flying insects then can enter the bait station through either the vent holes or the open bottom portion, become affected by the bait, and die.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a bait station for flying insects is provided. The bait station includes a vertical side wall enclosure and a roof. The vertical side wall enclosure has inner and outer surfaces and top and bottom portions. The roof is positioned adjacent the top portion of the side wall enclosure. An interior is defined by the inner surface of the vertical side wall enclosure and the roof. The bottom portion of the vertical side wall enclosure is substantially open causing the interior to be substantially unbounded from below. When bait is positioned in the interior, insects may freely fly upward into the bait station through the substantially open bottom portion of the vertical side wall enclosure.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a bait station for flying insects is provided. The bait station includes a vertical side wall enclosure and a roof. The vertical side wall enclosure has inner and outer surfaces and top and bottom portions. The vertical side wall enclosure further has a plurality of vent holes extending from the inner surface to the outer surface. The roof is positioned adjacent the top portion of the side wall enclosure, and has an awning extending past the outer surface of the vertical side wall enclosure. An interior is defined by the inner surface of the vertical side wall enclosure and the roof. The interior is intended for holding bait, and attractant from such bait can permeate through the vent holes to attract flying insects.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, a bait station for flying insects is provided. The bait station includes a vertical side wall enclosure and a roof. The vertical side wall enclosure includes a plurality of shell elements, each pivotally coupled to an adjacent shell element. The vertical side wall enclosure further has inner and outer surfaces, top and bottom portions, and a plurality of vent holes extending from the inner surface to the outer surface. The roof is positioned adjacent the top portion of the side wall enclosure. An interior is defined by the inner surface of the vertical side wall enclosure and the roof. The interior is intended for holding bait, and attractant from such bait is permitted to permeate through the vent holes to attract flying insects.